Introduction

I’ve been using low power CPUs for some time. This has caused some issues when I’ve needed more CPU processing power. My goal is to move to more power hungry CPUs but still try and save power. To this end I decided to change the CPU governor Proxmox uses. I also switched to using a small form factor case with its lower power power supply.

Configure CPU for Low Power

To make these changes you’ll need to ssh into your proxmox host.

Lat’s start by looking at your current CPU freequency.
> cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz

The above command returns the following for my server.

cpu MHz : 3800.000
cpu MHz : 1760.822
cpu MHz : 3800.000
cpu MHz : 3800.000

First update repos.
> sudo apt update

Install acpi utilities.
> sudo apt install acpi-support acpid acpi

Its time to edit grub.
> nano -w /etd/default/grub

Look for the line that starts with “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT” and add “intel_pstate=disable”..

Mine looks like this.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet intel_pstate=disable"

Save and now rebuild grub.
> update-grub

Reboot the system and ssh back in. Change the governor being used.
> echo “conservative” | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Check your new CPU frequency.
> cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz

Mine shows then following when idle.

cpu MHz : 1605.058
cpu MHz : 1600.000
cpu MHz : 1600.000
cpu MHz : 1600.000

Edit crontab to make the changes permanent.
> crontab -e

add the following to the bottom and save.

@reboot  echo "conservative" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Conclusion

This is a quick tutorial that I hope helps someone out.